


April 13th, 20XX

by SoyCaptain



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe, Canon Compliant, Gen, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Suicide Attempt, Trauma, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 14:43:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20707724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoyCaptain/pseuds/SoyCaptain
Summary: "Goro Akechi wonders if the nuns at the orphanage were right about angels. The thought terrifies him. He’s read The Book and he knows the truth. Eldritch. Abominable. Unfathomable. Nothing like the beautiful oil paintings or the delicate stained glass windows. Something from human nightmares watered down with thousands of years of folklore padding.His speculation is corroborated with the visage of a man. Both beautiful and magnificent in all senses. Akechi finds himself drowning and it’s a lot less pleasant than his depressive daydreams."AU where Akechi and Akira meet far earlier and by a less-than-ideal coincidence atop a suspension bridge.





	April 13th, 20XX

**Author's Note:**

> **READ END NOTES FOR ADDITIONAL CONTENT WARNINGS**

Goro Akechi makes what he hopes to be his final walk, but what he knows—rationally—will not be. He’s made the walk more times that he’d ever admit. He’s felt the wind seep through the fabric of his sweater—moist and cool from the bridge’s altitude. He can smell the tinge of sea as it lines the inside of his throat and nose.  
His hair will stand on end as anticipation engulfs him—real and cool and filled with city waste—in preparation for the real thing below. Coating his skin. Coating his lungs. Seeping into his cells like the wind loved to seep through his sweaters.  
And he’ll bask in it.  
The adrenaline will bustle through him as he grips the metal bridge scaffolding. Everything metallic. Everything tinged and heady. Thoughts about how he’ll join it. How his blood will decorate the waves, sweet mingling with bitter salt-sweep.  
Romantic, really. Well, the most romance he’s ever experienced.  
He thinks it might be the best he deserves. Tragic, but beautiful. The world would only have to know his as Goro Akechi: The Second Coming of the Detective Prince. Ace Detective Goro Akechi who met his untimely end. A sad example of the state of things. Poor boy. Such genius wasted.  
But by the time he’s prepared to take the step, to breach the threshold, to surrender. He’s stopped. A glass barrier, a forcefield, crops up and blocks his path. He’s resigned to be a sick voyeur of potential annihilation.  
The waves will lap at the corrugated legs of the bridge and he’ll hear their laughter within the crashes. He’ll exhale, adrenaline cramming itself into the nooks of his neurons like the rush hour train.  
Salty air on his lips is bitter and the call of the sea fizzles to a whisper. He’s thought about it too much. Is he a coward or is the act cowardly? God, is he just like his mother?  
Fuck no.  
He deserves better. He won’t be forgotten as a statistical cautionary tale. As soft and tragic like a Victorian heroine. He’ll be remembered for greatness. For success. For patricide. Like a Greek hero. His story will be great and he will make his child self proud. He’ll make a story his child self would have loved.  
The walk feels routine. Habitual. And Akechi hates it. He hates how he marinates in an oscillation between self-pity and self-loathing. He hates that he’s not happy even now. He hates that his mother might have been right about how rotten the world is—  
The detective is thrown from his state of automatic rumination. There’s a change to his usual dirge-laden dress rehearsal. A figure stands approximately fifteen feet ahead of him. Their hands grip the frame of the bridge as their feet straddle the outer railing. Their posture, while generally bad, does not seem scared.  
Akechi breaks into a run before he can contemplate it. The figure, whom Akechi assumes to be a man from the build, braces himself with a shuddering deep breath. Flashbulbs of the many times he has enjoyed the same dreadful view illuminate. They decorate the inside of Akechi’s skull with empathy-induced christmas lights.  
The man’s weight shifts between his feet as the detective arrives close enough to speak without yelling.  
“Hey, wait a second!”  
It startles both of them. The man flinches and Akechi is afraid he’ll lose his balance. However, he steadies himself until he’s stiff with the poise he wore seconds prior—arms and legs mimicking the rigid angles of the bridge. There’s no motion to dismount the railing. In either direction. Akechi feels compelled to continue with a lukewarm diatribe about why the man should step back.  
“Please come down from the railing and we can talk about this,” the detective begins, garnishing the request with his best politely-authoritative tone. He hopes its flourish is enough to disguise the unease and panic overturning within him. The situation is awkward and he’s suddenly thankful that no one has caught him during the countless melancholic masturbatory hours he’s spent on the bridge by himself.  
Nothing. Akechi zeroes in on the minutiae of the other’s body for any indication that he needs to redouble his efforts. After a second of observation he watches the man tilt his head at the slightest of angles. Not as an effort to dismount or turn to the detective, but a subtlety indicative of listening. Whether that listening is for words or silence, Akechi doesn’t know, but it’s an opening that he decides to take.  
“You don’t have to go through with this. There are resources available. People that care and can help. I’m a detective, myself,”he tries. The stranger’s head rights itself.  
Akechi is glad the other can’t see him roll his eyes at the cliche half-truths rolling off his tongue. He can’t find a reason why he should care so much about a stranger’s suicidal inclinations. Especially when his words don’t seem to be penetrating the young man’s rigid frame. Arms spread out and grappling the scaffolding, copying the images of Christ that littered the walls of the orphanage Akechi rotted in for years.  
And Akechi deduces that he’s definitely a younger man—noticing how the wind whips through his clothes and hugs his lithe silhouette. The way the boy’s black curls bounce like they have a buoyancy of their own.  
He doesn’t blame the suicidal man for not reacting to his empty pleasantries. He certainly doesn’t believe them.  
It’s no use. Akechi contemplates leaving the man to his own devices. There’s no one else on the suspension bridge. He could head back home, try to sleep, and focus on his own life and plans. He’s looking out for himself and he doesn’t have time to worry about the well-being of strangers beyond performatively.  
But then that feeling. The sour taste. A moment of clarity that demonstrates the salience of his own inferiority.  
This strange young man is serious. This random, low-life teen is going to succeed where he failed. He’s going to get the elusive peace that Goro Akechi desperately craves.  
If Akechi was a better person, he would be horrified. He would be sickened by the macabre jealousy roiling in his guts.  
But Akechi is tired.  
So he allows the envy to warm him where empathy should burn and he begins again:  
“What’s your name?”  
No answer, but the boy shuffles atop the cold, slippery railing. The detective thinks he may be preparing to step down, but he’s disappointed when the stranger resumes his position as a petrified Christ.  
“Shall I help you down?” Akechi continues, hoping his frustration isn’t obvious. Or that it is. Whatever it takes to get the man to join him on the sidewalk. Whatever stops the pathetic bitterness singing his fingertips.  
“You’re still here?,” a voice asks. It’s carried on the wind—transmitted directly to Akechi’s ears. It’s low and hoarse like a whisper despite being the normal volume for conversation. How the message reached him over the roar of the sea below them and with his back turned is a mystery.  
“Yes, of course. I can’t just leave you like this. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself,” Akechi lies. It sounds like the right thing to say. It doesn’t phase him anymore. He’s used to delivering speeches about morality and justice that would rival Aristotle. Or at least make him proud. He’s a friend with hubris.  
He really wishes the boy would join him on the pavement before Akechi joins him on the rails.  
There’s an exhale of breath that Akechi infers to be a laugh. It’s not condescending, exactly. But nevertheless it irks the detective. He steps closer, idly jumping between the urge to catch or push the stranger.  
“You wouldn’t be so willing to help me if you knew what kind of person I am.”  
Once more Akechi is rocked by the baritone reverberations that have their epicenter within the stranger’s chest. He notes a quiver within them--minute, but visible to the detective’s trained eye. It’s a break he’s heard countless times before: while interrogating suspects, while interviewing victims, from his own mother…  
But the young man grasps it. He doesn’t allow it to disrupt his foundations and topple his structures. He lets it settle and wears the dust as makeup.  
“I highly doubt that,” Akechi sputters, letting formality tilt to the wayside in favor of his best attempt at personability. Praying that the man will flock to the warmth in his voice like a moth to a flame. Away from the siren’s call to arms that echoes from the cool depths below. Even though Akechi’s warmth is a space heater instead of a bonfire, it just needs to be enough to bring the encounter to a close. Just enough so that the detective doesn’t end up melting his own fortifications. He can’t risk feeling alive.  
“You’re a cop?” the man asks, the break in his voice smoothed over. It’s asked with a mix of suspicion and macabre-tinted humor. The wariness has Akechi wondering just who exactly he may be helping. A thief? An arsonist? A psychopath?  
Goro Akechi resigns that he doesn’t have much of a moral high ground in that regard.  
“Not quite. I’m still a high school student, but I’ve been commissioned by the government on account of my detective abilities,” Akechi pitches to him, trying not to seem to self-congratulatory. Not only does it put people off, but he knows that it’s undeserved. Nevertheless, his answer seems to loosen something inside the other. The rigidity holding his limbs taut and fastened to the metal smooths, alleviating tension in his joints before he speaks again.  
“And you’re not going to call the cops if I get down?”  
At first, Akechi isn’t sure whether it’s deliberate or a result of the breeze, but the man sways. With a step closer, it seems he’s idly bouncing himself to and fro against inertia-bound fingerpads. It has a nervous energy Akechi likens to the foot tap Sae Niijima does when she’s impatient. He absorbs it and the situation seems more dire. Like he’s been given an ultimatum--like he’s bargaining for this man’s life. It’s a strange sort of power to hold as Akechi is never the judge or the jury-- he’s always the executioner.  
The suicidal man isn’t pleading for his case. The gaps from his slackened posture fill with an air otherwise absent before. Playful confidence. Like a court jester performing in a Greek tragicomedy. Practiced, enchanting. Something swells like a roar of applause within the young detective as he watches the wayward stranger juggle himself on the precipice of life and death. As the man exchanges between annihilant and performer, the swells reach high tide--too colossal and raging to confine within a label--and Akechi delivers his judgement  
“No. You’ll be free to go.”  
The swaying stops and for several seconds the detective is struck with the devastation of failure. He watches thin, pale fingers wrap around the metal scaffolding again. They adopt a simulation of the rigidity they possessed when Akechi first arrived. A silence jammed between tension and tranquility surrounds them before it’s parted by the stranger’s voice.  
“Akira.”  
Akechi is startled out of a trance he’d adopted from watching the way the wind enveloped the other. The way it followed him, molded to him. Like they were one in the same and he would be swept away--he would die down--when the wind died down. The ambiguity between tense and tranquil folds back in on him until he’s suffocating. Akechi decides it’s more akin to dread as he opens his mouth in an attempt to breathe:  
“Excuse me?”  
“That’s my name. Akira,” the stranger--Akira--explains. He’s listless but grave as it rolls from his tongue. Spoken like a spell. Like a loaded question. Like a white lie. Akechi tries to analyze the implied contradiction, but he’s still gasping for air.  
“Oh. Well, Akira,” he starts. The name tastes bitter, like a spoonful of cough syrup. It’s almost refreshing despite the film that lines the membrane of his mouth after. “Why don’t you step down from there? We can talk some more down here.”  
Akira makes no effort to dismount and, again, the sense of wrongness haunts Akechi. He attempts an exorcism. He attempts to finish the spell. To utter the incantation that will consecrate the oath.  
“My name is Goro Akechi.” His feels even more like a lie, but it’s what he has to give. It’s the only thing that truly belongs to him and he hopes it’s enough of a sacrifice for the man. Though Akechi is skilled in weaving false words of power, he’s faltering. He didn’t think he had room for anymore promises.  
A sufficient offering. Akira takes a personal moment to digest it. The swaying from before recommences and he uses it to maneuver himself from the railing. It’s surprisingly graceful. Ethereal, catlike. The detective isn’t sure whether it’s from rote dexterity or practice. Evidence points to the former as the amateur acrobat cooly adjusts to life on solid ground. The difference a few minutes offered to this man strikes Akechi with a nearly dizzying bout of motion sickness; a jumper on his mark compared to the quiet, subtle confidence standing before him.  
Goro Akechi wonders if the nuns at the orphanage were right about angels. The thought terrifies him. He’s read The Book and he knows the truth. Eldritch. Abominable. Unfathomable. Nothing like the beautiful oil paintings or the delicate stained glass windows. Something from human nightmares watered down with thousands of years of folklore padding.  
His speculation is corroborated with the visage of a man. Both beautiful and magnificent in all senses. Akechi finds himself drowning and it’s a lot less pleasant than his depressive daydreams.  
Curls frame impossibly warm eyes neatly tucked away behind a barrier of glass--streaks and splatters of dried tears catch glean from the overhead street lights. There’s pain there, as expected, but it commingles with a dash of flamboyance and sass subdued. Of course he has to subdue it--both he and Akechi know that the genius detective couldn’t handle it. It infuriates him. He didn’t want anymore divine intervention. He can’t handle anymore divinity. He can’t handle his own mundanity.  
Akira’s lips hitch into a hint of a smile and Akechi breaks at the fulcrum in the cupid’s bow. His body language doesn’t match with its hunched over disposition--he looks guarded or wary, like the stray cats that hang around Akechi’s apartment terrace who bow and scurry when he extends his hand in friendship. An embodied contradiction. It’s painful to see such aspects of himself reflected in the countenance of another.  
Bitterness returns from its vacation and takes its residence in Akechi’s gullet. It grows and metastasizes into a cancer that seeps into the depths of his bowels before returning again in a sick, cyclical regurgitation. It lives in his cytoplasm, it lives generations upon generations until it’s no longer bitterness but a malignant fear thrumming through his arteries.  
If the man were to change his mind and take a running leap into surefire death, Akechi’s not sure anything could stop himself from following--from attempting a rescue mission when neither of them can swim.  
He hates it. Despises it. It’s a challenge to his already fragile sense of autonomy. This man is manifested as everything the young detective both loathes and desperately craves.  
“It’s nice to meet you, Akechi-san. Thanks for your help.” It’s a whisper, husky and embarrassed. The clarity of the sentence alerts Akechi to their close proximity--a full arms length reduced to a forearm. The young man’s blazer caresses the exposed skin of his hand when it flaps in the wind. Akechi strikes a contrapposto before casually growing the distance between them. While professionalism grants him a degree of plausible deniability in this, the discomforting tides raging within weather the crags and kiss the cliffs like he wishes his body would--  
“Ah, the pleasure is mine. I am always happy to help someone in need,” Akechi forces out as he forces his gaze from the boy’s lips to his eyes. As he forces the bile lodged in his throat back into his stomach. As he forces down the desire to close the distance.  
Absolutely not. The detective cannot entangle himself with someone like this. Ignoring their respective mental instabilities, giving himself to another divinity is a death sentence.  
But Akechi swears he can hear the song of singularity play against the metronome in his chest. He’s called--he always wondered how Jesus knew he was called after living years in silence. Akechi hates that he sees it swirling in the melancholy patterns of Akira’s eyes like an erotic tasseography. His God works in mysterious ways.  
“It’s quite chilly tonight, Akira-kun. I would recommend heading home immediately,” the detective recommences. If his lips are moving, then the nightmarish daydreams aren’t. Maybe that way the stranger won’t hear the polygraph alarms hidden within the thrumming of his pulse in the silence.  
A sound akin to agreement growls from Akira’s throat and Akechi takes it as his sign to leave. The detective takes another step back, situating himself for an about-face and a humbling flourish of a parting bow when Akira speaks again:  
“So what were you doing out this late, detective?”  
Akechi plants the heel he’d cocked for his escape--straightening himself into the poised detective prince he needed to be to lie through his teeth again. He does it constantly--lying even to himself--so why does he feel so challenged? Akira hadn’t said it in an accusatory tone, he didn’t even lilt the word ‘detective’ like most do. But there’s a tension in his jaw that highlights the angle of the bone beneath--a spread of skin pale, fragile, beautiful.  
Why does his essence seem to crave tragedy? Why do his fingers ache to wrap around the pallid expanse as his fingers had grasped the iron scaffolding lifeline? Why does the boy in front of him wear pain so beautifully--like an accessory? Why does Akechi want to help him achieve some sick type of ethereality by splotching his neck with bruises?  
“Oh, I often take walks at night,” Akechi begins. At least that part isn’t a lie. “They’re excellent for clearing my mind and I don’t have time for them during the day. I am a very busy man.”  
Akechi could keep going--keep boasting about how important he is, about how many people like him and shallowly depend on his skills. But the apologetic twist of Akira’s face in tandem with the flicker of recognition that parts the sea of melancholia writhing in the man’s eyes moves Akechi to stop.  
“I think I’ve heard of you,” the young man begins. His eyes flit to the left and Akechi figures he’s lying--a rookie mistake Akechi trained out of himself years ago. His gaze settles straight before he begins again--defocused and looking beyond the detective. “On TV, maybe. Sorry for bothering you.”  
Akira’s meekness from before amplifies to express his regret. Akechi can’t help noticing how good it looks on him. Pride--no, not quite--domination crawls into the detective’s chest. Everything is right again. Comfortable. As it should be. Yes, the young man is just a suicidal low-life put here as a petty challenge. Akechi had merely imagined the metaphysical discrepancy. His pity, his inept sense of empathy, had blinded him. The puppeteer that rents the young detective’s headspace sighs at how easily Akechi plays his role.  
“It’s not a bother at all! I’m just glad that you’re no longer on that railing. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, after all,” Akechi monologues. The cliche tacked on the end really sells it. He knows it would sound absolutely painful coming out of another’s mouth, but Goro Akechi has learned that you can feed anyone arsenic as long as it’s coated in honey.  
Akira seems to mull this over and Akechi takes the opportunity to observe him--to take a mental inventory that he can recall at a safer date. Hands in pockets. Curved back, rounded shoulders. Downward cast eyes. Chewing his lip. Insecure. Nervous.  
But behind the lashes there’s a spark. A lighthouse in the fog. Subdued confidence? No, it’s closer to anger. Akechi’s ego deflates and the space it leaves is filled with self-consciousness of his hubristic musings. Of his blasphemy. His sin. Emotions swirl within him, treacherous and tepid, reaching another apex.  
But the blasphemy is good. Akechi can’t tell if it’s because of the novelty or the dialectic tension between them. There’s something about Akira that Akechi can’t read--just when he thinks he has him nailed down, Akechi is jolted by enigma. Like the other man has fineprint footnotes scribbled in an ancient, forbidden language. The ambiguity is terrifying, but exhilarating. Singularity’s call echoes within his walls again. There’s a giant sign, bolded and red: DO NOT TOUCH. But Akechi is tired of starving himself for a society so rotten and ignorant. Akechi knows he deserves to taste something sweet while he waits for the main course in November.  
He lays a hand on Akira’s shoulder.  
“Really, it’s no problem. Promise,” the detective implores. He lets the thrill of the minor intimacy pulse through him. He tidies the grin that plumes across his face at the flex and relax of the shoulder his fingertips grasp. The young man meets eyes with him. The lighthouse shows him shipwrecks and Akechi suits up for salvage.  
“Would you like something to eat?” he begins again, eyes locked with Akira’s. He sees his own uncertainty reflected. Akechi doubles down, hoping to fog the mirror with a implication-laden warmth.  
“Would you like me to walk you home?”Akechi doesn’t know what force is pushing him to speak, what force is marionetting his fingers to knead at flesh buried beneath dark suit fabric.  
But he doesn’t resist.  
And neither does Akira as he nods in affirmation.

**Author's Note:**

> CW: mental illness, attempted suicide, suicidal thoughts, disordered thinking, unhealthy relationships, manipulation, trauma, romanticization of death and suicide, religious metaphors particularly of the Christian variety, flowery language, water metaphors


End file.
